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CALGARY — Blood-soaked gauze and bandages covered Richard Doucette’s body when he met his friend at an Airdrie Walmart.

He hadn’t eaten in days. He had stabbed himself several times and tried to hang himself with extension cords.

He told his friend and personal training client the evening of Feb. 23 that he planned to leave town, and that he would rather die than go back to jail.

Less than 24 hours later, RCMP officers would discover the lifeless body of Andrea Conroy, his on-again off-again girlfriend, lying on the kitchen floor of her Airdrie home.

An ensuing manhunt for Doucette, identified as the sole suspect in her slaying, came to a halt when the bodybuilder with a history of domestic violence and steroid abuse took his own life in a small-town Alberta motel.

According to a court document, the grisly discovery of Conroy’s body and troubling conversations Doucette had with two female friends a day earlier gave officers reason to suspect he was behind the woman’s stabbing death.

“Doucette has had both motive and opportunity to murder Conroy,” reads the application for a search warrant.

The document shows that days before RCMP launched an investigation into the murder-suicide, 41-year-old Doucette and friend Heidi Tritscher had been sending each other text messages.

Her personal trainer’s replies became increasingly sombre.

On Feb. 21, Doucette told Tritscher there had been a family crisis and he needed to head east.

Her followup text messages went unanswered.

Finally, on Feb. 23, he wrote her saying he was in Ontario because of a death in the family and wanted to be left alone.

Later that evening, he sent another message saying he “was not doing good,” that he planned to leave town and that he would not see her again, according to the affidavit.

Tritscher convinced him to meet her at the Airdrie Walmart at around 7:30 p.m. that same night.

During their meeting, Doucette revealed he’d encountered trouble. He told her he had already bid farewell to his children, and that he feared returning to prison.

Doucette had served time for the attempted murder of a girlfriend, and had a history of violence toward his female partners, according to parole documents from the 1990s.

At the Walmart, Doucette told Tritscher he’d gone to Conroy’s residence to see whether she was seeing someone else and that “things got out of hand, and now he had knife wounds,” according to the court documents.

Doucette showed her the bandages on his body and the back of his head.

He said he hadn’t slept in a couple of days, was “messed up” and had “screwed up” his life. He also told her he’d attempted suicide.

He said he couldn’t believe this wasn’t “all over the news” and that they couldn’t get help, which she took to mean it was too late and a life had been claimed.

The document shows the next morning, on Feb. 24, Tritscher contacted Airdrie RCMP requesting that officers check on Conroy’s well-being.

Tritscher didn’t know Andrea well enough to know her last name.

But, in tears, she told police she “felt he may have done something to her,” the affidavit read.

When officers went to Conroy’s home later that afternoon shortly before 2 p.m., they discovered the door unlocked with no indication of forced entry.

Inside, they found the 33-year-old single mother lying dead on the kitchen floor with cut marks visible through her black Nike shirt.

Two tipped over kitchen stools were the only other signs that a struggle had taken place.

A two-day-old newspaper still remained on the front step of her two-storey house.

Officers estimated Conroy had been dead for at least 24 hours.

Later that evening, on Feb. 24, officers interviewed another one of Doucette’s friends, who said she received free workout sessions from him in exchange for cleaning his house and looking after his dog.

Rita Trafford told police that she went to clean Doucette’s home in the Big Springs subdivision at around 2 p.m. on Feb. 23.

She found blood throughout the master bedroom, including on the pillowcase, bed sheets, and pants and underwear left on the floor.

A dirty knife was left on one of the corners of the bedpost.

Bloody towels littered the bathroom floor and blood was visible in the sink and bathtub, she had told police.

The Herald could not reach either Tritscher or Trafford for an interview.

After making the gruesome discovery, Trafford said she texted Doucette. He agreed to meet her at a Sobeys parking lot in northeast Calgary that same day.

The report details how Doucette told Trafford he’d tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists and stabbing himself 15 times.

When that didn’t work, he tried hanging himself in the basement using extension cords.

Each attempt resulted in him falling to the floor. He cut the back of his head during the second try, she was told.

He told Trafford he hadn’t eaten in days and was heartbroken over his breakup with Conroy.

Trafford told police Doucette was bipolar but had stopped taking his medication. She added he had also recently ceased taking steroids, and that affected his mood.

The following day, on Feb. 25, officers were given approval to search Doucette’s home. There they seized several items, including a pillow case, comforter, bed sheets, knives, swabs of blood, underwear and pants, a pile of clothes, a Blackberry phone and pills.

The investigation later turned to the Double D motel in Nanton south of Calgary when a man’s body was discovered inside one of the rooms.

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